So Nintendo's last big game on the Wii, and a showcase of motion+ is 'complete' and only now going through the magic Nintendo polishing machine, all for a worldwide simultaneous launch.

We've got a few bits more on the story and game specifics from the article as well:

What's that, Zelda's not a princess? Well, that makes sense why she looked much more 'normal' in all the trailers.

- In this game, Zelda starts out as a childhood friend of Link's -- and not royalty. "She's not a princess this time," Aonuma said, "which is something I'll pretty much have to put forth right now in order to talk about this title. She's a childhood friend, but she goes away in the midst of the game and it's Link's job to search for her."

Different items in the begining? Yes, please.

- Aonuma's team is making a deliberate effort to give Link new items -- like the boomerang-beetle in the E3 demo -- early on in Skyward Sword. "With previous Zeldas," he said, "the common pattern was that the really neat items wouldn't show up until later on in the game. You need to have the basic item set or it wouldn't be Zelda, so the new items tended to get shunted to the latter part of the game. [Shigeru] Miyamoto said that had to change, like 'This is neat, let's bring it out from the start.' So a lot of neat new items will show up pretty early on."

And, evidently we're going ot learn Ganon's origins?

- Will Ganon show up? "This game talks about the birth of the Master Sword, and it touches on why Ganondorf showed up.

I, for one, look forward to getting my waggle on and slashing enemies in a simliar manner to Red Steel 2. I think the 3rd person perspective and not having to return to aiming will make it much more managable.

UPDATE: The release date is November 20th, 2011, there will be 2 versions. One will be the standard game for $50, the other will come with a gold Motion+ remote for $70. Both will, for a limited time, come with a Zelda 25th anniversary soundtrack CD from the smyphonic concert series.

They said Twilight Princess offered around 70 hours of gameplay as well. I doubt it took most gamers that much time.

I found every heart container, caught every bug, and completed every tasks, and I'm pretty sure it clocked in around 60-70 hours for me.

I came close to 100% but didn't have the stamina to go locate the few I missed and took just over 60hrs. So I'd say 70hrs was about right, if you tried to 100% it the first try without any outside influence.

The unfortunate side effect is I'll likely be spending money on a black nunchuck (black and gold is one of my favorite color combos) to go with it, and maybe a gold CCPro from the Goldeneye bundle.

Yeah I have that CCP, so I'm looking forward to having this to match. Since I used the CC to play SSBB, Mario Kart, and Muramasa, figured that would be a nice combo. I do feel a little weird about the white nunchuck but I already have 4 from way back when everyone was coming over to play the Wii, and there's just no point in buying a new nunchuck for color right now.

Yeah I did gamestop too, since it's a Sunday release. Makes me pretty sick to give them money, but I didn't want to wait until Monday for Amazon. Can get a lot of gaming done on a Sunday. And there might even be a Sat midnight release party.

I still might try to swing by Walmart at midnight and if I can get the CE there, to hell with Gamestop... we'll see.

Yeah I did gamestop too, since it's a Sunday release. Makes me pretty sick to give them money, but I didn't want to wait until Monday for Amazon. Can get a lot of gaming done on a Sunday. And there might even be a Sat midnight release party.

I still might try to swing by Walmart at midnight and if I can get the CE there, to hell with Gamestop... we'll see.

Take solace in the crummy profit they get from sales of new games.

I only buy used there during great sales, B2G1s and such. And I really like most of the people that work at the one I go to, so it doesn't feel quite so dirty.

So, here's a kinda spoiler-ish (didn't look too closely) artwork gallery, which shows some locations, chracters, and some of the weapon/items of the game including upgraded versions.

Google chrome to the rescue! We just lost power at work just now for a minute and outlook is basically decided it doesn't want to do anything after loading the program, but not any personal data, but chrome recovered the text in the post above. I was gonna abandon the post, too.

Seattle, where the weather is unlikely to kill you in an interesting fashion.

gregrampage wrote:

I didn't expect to see Bayonetta in that list.

It was a reasonably controversial inclusion at the time. Having spent some time with it though, I kind of agree with it's inclusion. It's a spectacular action game that keeps innovating from start to finish. I think that it's presentation put a lot of people off.

EDIT - almost to a tee, every single game on that list can be called 'genre-defining', in that they are (or at least were at the time) head-and-shoulders above their genre peers.